William Branch Giles

William Branch Giles
portrait by John Adams Elder
24th Governor of Virginia
In office March 4, 1827 – March 4, 1830
Preceded by	John Tyler
Succeeded by	John Floyd
United States Senator from Virginia
In office December 4, 1804 – March 3, 1815
Preceded by	Andrew Moore
Succeeded by	Armistead T. Mason
In office August 11, 1804 – December 4, 1804
Appointed by	John Page
Preceded by	Abraham B. Venable
Succeeded by	Andrew Moore
Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 9th district
In office March 4, 1801 – March 3, 1803
Preceded by	Joseph Eggleston
Succeeded by	Philip R. Thompson
In office December 7, 1790 – October 2, 1798
Preceded by	Theodorick Bland
Succeeded by	Joseph Eggleston
Member of the Virginia House of Delegates from Amelia County
In office 1826–1827
In office 1816–1817
In office 1798–1800
Personal details
Born	(1762-08-12)August 12, 1762 Amelia Courthouse, Virginia, U.S.
Political party	Democratic-Republican
Alma mater	College of William & Mary Hampden–Sydney College

William Branch Giles (August 12, 1762 – December 4, 1830; the g is pronounced like a j) was an American statesman, long-term

After another term in the House, from 1801 to 1803, Giles was appointed as a Senator from Virginia after the resignation of Wilson Cary Nicholas in 1804. Giles served in the US Senate and was reappointed in 1810 until he resigned on March 3, 1815. Giles strongly advocated the removal of Justice Samuel Chase after his impeachment, urging the Senate to consider it as a political decision (as to whether the people of the United States should have confidence in Chase) rather than as a trial.

Giles was deeply disappointed by the acquittal of Chase. He supported the election of Madison as president in 1808, in preference to the Federalist's candidate Charles Cotesworth Pinckney. Giles was Madison's chief advocate in Virginia.

After the election, however, he joined with Senator

Giles's refusal to accept the General Assembly's instructions led to his rejection at the next poll for a senator. (The state legislatures elected senators in those days.) Giles served one relatively uneventful term in the Virginia House of Delegates in 1816–1817 and then retired from political office for a time. He, however, published opinion pieces and columns, chiefly in the Richmond, Virginia, Enquirer, in which he deplored the Era of Good Feelings as false prosperity, given over to banks, tariffs, and fraudulent internal improvements; these would centralize and corrupt government, and ruin the farmers. He attacked John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay as he had attacked Hamilton, calling them corrupt Anglophiles.

Giles also published a criticism of the Jeffersonian program for public education. Giles argued that it was unjust to tax one man to educate another man's children, and the teachers that the government employed would constitute a special interest, always ready to vote for higher taxes and government spending. Besides, he said, giving every boy in Virginia three years of school would have limited practical utility, deprive farm families of much-needed labor power, and leave the typical "scholar" unfitted for the return to hard labor that awaited him.

When James Barbour left the Senate in 1825, Giles attempted to persuade the legislature to appoint him as a replacement; they appointed John Randolph instead. In 1826, Giles was again elected to the House of Delegates, and in 1827 he was elected Governor; Giles served as Governor of Virginia for three terms, from March 4, 1827, to March 4, 1830. From the governorship, Giles encouraged Virginia's Senator Littleton Waller Tazewell to organize a southern resistance to the American System of Henry Clay centered on a boycott on northern manufactures. Tazewell found little support for it among southern senators.

In Giles's last term, he was a member of the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1829–1830 where he strongly supported the existing apportionment of the House of Delegates, giving the eastern counties of Virginia, with a minority of the voters, control of the legislature. He did favor reform of the suffrage requirements, however. Giles also opposed the movement in the convention to strengthen his own office, the governorship. Strong governorships in other states, such as New York, were at the center of political machines kept together by patronage and corruption, he said, and the reason that Virginia had not suffered from those ills was that the governorship in his state was too weak to be worth fighting for. Rather than follow the example of New York, with its party machine, it was better for Virginia to retain George Mason's executive model. Giles lost to some extent: while the governor's term remained short and was still accountable to the General Assembly, the Constitution of 1830 abolished the privy council, thus making the governorship a bit more independent.

Legacy

Giles married twice; first, Martha Peyton Tabb, in 1797; he built his 18-room house, "The Wigwam," for her. They had three children. After she died in 1808, he married Frances Ann Gwynn in 1810 and had three more children.

Counties in two states were named in his honor:

The Wigwam was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1969.^[4]

References

This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (September 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

• F. Thornton Miller, "Giles, William Branch"; American National Biography Online, Feb. 2000. Access Date: Wed November 26, 16:23:26 EST 2008 (link requires subscription
• W. Frank Craven, "William Branch Giles" in Princetonians, 1776–1783; a Biographical Dictionary, Princeton University Press, 1981.

Further reading

• Dice Anderson, William Branch Giles; A Study in the Politics of Virginia and the Nation from 1790 to 1830, George Banta, 1914 and William Branch Giles, a Life, George Banta, 1915.
• Mary A. Giunta, The Public Life of William Branch Giles, Republican, 1790–1815, Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, 1980. For some reason, this study leaves off before Giles' editorial and gubernatorial career.
• Kevin R. C. Gutzman
  , Virginia's American Revolution: From Dominion to Republic, 1776–1840, Lexington Books, 2007.
• Kevin R. C. Gutzman
  , "Preserving the Patrimony: William Branch Giles and Virginia vs. The Federal Tariff," The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography" 104 (Summer 1996), 341–72.

External links

• United States Congress. "William Branch Giles (id: G000183)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• A Guide to the Governor William B. Giles Executive Papers, 1827–1830 at The Library of Virginia

U.S. House of Representatives
Preceded by Theodorick Bland	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 9th congressional district December 7, 1790 – October 2, 1798	Succeeded by Joseph Eggleston
Preceded by Joseph Eggleston	Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's 9th congressional district March 4, 1801 – March 4, 1803	Succeeded by Philip R. Thompson
U.S. Senate
Preceded by Abraham B. Venable	U.S. senator (Class 1) from Virginia August 11, 1804 – December 3, 1804 Served alongside: Andrew Moore	Succeeded by Andrew Moore
Preceded by Andrew Moore	Richard Brent, James Barbour	Succeeded by Armistead T. Mason
Political offices
Preceded by John Tyler	Governor of Virginia March 4, 1827 – March 4, 1830	Succeeded by John Floyd